


Green

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Character Study, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Not Beta Read, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-27 11:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7616710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where everyone is assigned to different lions, and my angst-filled analysis on how it would affect them.<br/>__<br/>The black lion doesn’t feel comforting or nice. Because it’s not. The black lion is an authority, and that much is clear in it’s personality. It’s not inquisitive like green, it doesn’t care. It’s not emotional like red. It’s not energetic like blue. It’s not protective and sweet like yellow. It’s not even itself. It’s cold and crisp and clear. It keeps Pidge sharp. It keeps Pidge awake.<br/>--<br/>Edit: now with an 8tracks playlist http://8tracks.com/apocolypsearisen/black-or-green#smart_id=dj:15113868</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Green

Pidge feels as if they’re seeing through a cracked screen. Reality feels off, and their world tilts in an odd manner. Things feel off. Things don’t feel right. Everyone stands before Allura and Coran, two completely alien beings, but Pidge can’t help but feel they’re the most alien out of them all, because they’re starting to see things in a weird, split-screen kind of view. Their vision had gone a little hazy the moment they stepped into the cave of the blue lion, and a steady static buzzed at the back of their head the second Hunk took the wheel with an excited twirl of his wrist. Things don’t feel right.  
They don’t vocalize this, and watch with interest as the lions are assigned. It’s funny, how they assumed their lions would coincide with their wardrobe, but that’s not how life works. Things don’t just fall into place like that. Hunk keeps his blue lion. Keith takes the green lion. Shiro takes the yellow lion. Lance takes the red one. They take the black lion. Except they can’t, not until everyone gets their own respective lions found. Things are skewed, and Pidge can barely make out that they’ll be going with Keith to get the green lion, while Shiro and Hunk go to get the yellow lion. Lance stays behind. Pidge thinks he shouldn’t stay back, with unfamiliar faces, without someone to ground himself to reality with. Pidge can feel Lance’s confusion, see the way his eyes clouded over, and they know he feels it too.  
Pidge feels it’s too soon. It’s far too soon to be going out on missions and what not. They know that this is relatively lax, but there is a hardness in Allura’s face that says things will only get harder to handle from here. Allura doesn’t seem soft, and Coran doesn’t seem very people-smart. Pidge feels a stone in their stomach begin to fester, it reminds them that they need to focus, that they have to rid themselves of the feeling that’s eating them alive even if they have no idea what the feeling even is. They decide they won’t let Allura push anyone too far too fast. They decide to be gentle with their teammates, they decide they would rather be the green paladin because green is more clinical, green is progress. Black feels void. Black feels so very empty and while empty is comforting, it is also terrifying. Pidge knows green is envy, and that is not what they are, but Pidge knows black is pride, bruising, hurtful pride. And that is what they are. They don’t want to face that aspect of themself.  
Keith looks concerned, and on edge. Pidge tries to remain calm. They feel displaced, under constant stress that somehow keeps them upright and functioning. It won’t last, but it will be enough to cement themself into what they need to be. It will be enough. Keith turns to them, and he looks startled, and confused, and all around not in good shape. Pidge smiles, almost like an afterthought, up at him. He smiles back, but Pidge knows it’s twitchy and fickle. They remain calm, even when the sloth man startles the both of them. Keith was ready to punch the poor thing in the face, and it took quite a few words to calm him down again. Keith, that is, not the sloth man, the sloth man was fairly neutral.  
Pidge continues to reassure Keith, continuing to add as much positive feedback to the things that are positive about him. They’re just trying their best with the options given, even if they can hear the voice of the green lion echo in their skull. It reverberates within their soul, the pull of it, but they pull back, they have to settle. They have to remain what they are. Whatever happened to make everything so unnatural and blotchy, happened for a reason. Perhaps it’s just random, or perhaps Allura had messed up their assignment, but Keith looks happy in the green lion, he looks content and he smiles up at Pidge. They feel an almost parental warmth fill their chest, and they hate it. They hate it vehemently.  
They give up on making themself feel better, and instead focus on talking to Keith. Keith seems jittery, and he doesn’t understand people, that much is obvious. It feels like Keith should be more distant, more closed off and volatile, temperamental. He’s not. He’s just a kid with abandonment issues and one who trusted too easily in certain things. Keith’s immediate bond with his lion is admirable, because he’s muttering to himself in thirty seconds flat about things Pidge ignores. It’s personal things, and it’s unlikely Keith would appreciate Pidge knowing every faceted detail of his life. So Pidge ignores his muttering, and relies on picking up their personalities as they go along.  
Pidge does a lot of that as time goes on. The first day as a member of Voltron, everyone seems starstruck, filled with awe at the glory and name and the aspect. Except for Lance, and themself of course, because they’re both confused. Things are wrong, and they both know it. They never talk of it. Lance wants to deny it, and if he acknowledges that things are wrong he will want to fix it. He won’t be patient about it. He wants people to be happy, and he wants to claim everyone’s attention, good or bad. Pidge tries to keep things positive, tries to make light contact via small chats during meals and joining into the ridged training schedule that Lance made to keep his overly active mind thinking ahead as oppose to thinking about things that will destroy him. Pidge has to remind him to eat occasionally, he seems obsessed with pushing his body’s limits. He’s holing himself up in his room and sometimes Pidge can hear him crying. He’s falling apart, and he confides in Pidge only once. He tells them that he feels so angry all the time. That he doesn’t know where it came from. He doesn’t understand it and he doesn’t like it. He wants to stay Lance, and he says he doesn’t feel anything like Lance anymore.  
All Pidge can do is be a shoulder to cry on. They feel so numb. They barely think of anything during these days of Voltron. They barely care. They always observe, though, always watch. Hunk seems relaxed, and unaware. He’s calm, and he doesn’t have a weight on his shoulders. Yellow was his color. But he got blue. Keith is as he is. He floats along like a cloud. He’s curious, clueless as to social cues, but he’s learning. He attaches himself to Lance, he doesn’t pay attention to the way every drop of thinly veiled anger that was etched into his face the day they all first truly met has been transferred to Lance. Lance can’t handle intense emotion, he’s impulsive and immature, and he’s mellow and irrational. He can’t be intense, but the intensity of the feelings Lance has to be feeling can’t be healthy. Keith would have handled them well, he has a semblance of self-control, despite how isolated he was from everyone, he seems the most enlightened on these things now. Which is interesting, because he’s become so much more vindictive, so much more unforgiving.  
Pidge finds Shiro the most interesting. Like Hunk and Keith, Shiro is unaware of what’s been done to them. Shiro is happy as he is, and Pidge is glad he doesn’t feel that deep ache in his chest anymore. Shiro is compassionate, and sure of himself, and he stands up taller now. Pidge can see he’s happier, he’s fulfilled. There’s no weight of being a leader on his plate, there’s no painful flashbacks to alien technology invading his being. Shiro is almost identical to what he was before the Galra got to him, and Pidge is happy. They wish him the best.  
But everything feels empty and unfamiliar. No one looks as they should. Their vision is cross faded with everyone’s alternate looks. Pidge stumbles, they’re always stumbling, because they can’t function like this. It feels as if a part of their brain was cut off.  
They only flourish when they have someone or something to slice apart. They don’t care what with, or when, or how, or even who. They just know it gives them feeling. They want to feel. They laugh and smile when they’re hurt. Pain feels so exhilarating compared to the endless static. It’s when they’re hurt that they remember they have a family damn it! They need to find Matt, and their dad! They need to do something. They have to stop being so complacent and close to the black lion.  
The black lion doesn’t feel comforting or nice. Because it’s not. The black lion is an authority, and that much is clear in it’s personality. It’s not inquisitive like green, it doesn’t care. It’s not emotional like red. It’s not energetic like blue. It’s not protective and sweet like yellow. It’s not even itself. It’s cold and crisp and clear. It keeps Pidge sharp. It keeps Pidge awake.  
Pidge is sure if given the chance to change things, they would. But there’s nothing they can change. They’re all stuck. And they can feel their deaths inching closer by the second. It’s a feeling Pidge knows well. The black lion sends waves of stories, of the feeling that comes before death. Pidge knows it well now, because when Pidge feels it, the black lion reminds her that that is what it is. That the feeling is not what it seems. Pidge wants to grasp it, wants to feel release into the ether. They don’t.  
They stick around, for whatever reason they may have. Inane things. Things that don’t feel big or important but are. And they stare at themself in the reflection of the windows when they’re alone. They look older, they look tired. They feel older, they feel tired.  
They liked green.


	2. Black

Shiro is the first one to die.  
Pidge can’t say that they’re surprised, because that would be a lie. They saw it coming. Shiro with yellow was dangerous. Yellow had no self-preservation, no selfishness, and Shiro had no reason to deny it of its base nature. Shiro grew too attached and close to his lion, practically became it. Pidge has a feeling that with the way Black keeps them as separate beings entirely, Shiro would have been better suited for it. But Pidge can’t think about that right now. They have to play support. They have to hold their team up even if the loss is crippling.  
The idea of Voltron is stupid. It’s dumb and doesn’t make sense to Pidge. Why make a super weapon only to split it up? Divvy up responsibility like that? Why have five machines, and consequently – people, rely on each other to become something bigger than themselves? It’s a liability, and it’s making Pidge’s head spin. They push it aside, throw themselves into battle and make sure that the Galra don’t get the yellow lion. They retreat back to the castle, mission successful at a cost they don’t want to acknowledge.  
But, the cost is hard not to pay attention to. Allura focuses on the technical aspect of it, panicking because now there’s no way for them to form Voltron. Pidge feels numb, and stays quiet as she can hear everyone around her mourning for one thing or another. Everyone lost something, if not a friend, a comrade, if not that, the last piece to Voltron. Pidge doesn’t mourn. Lance doesn’t either. Pidge doesn’t feel anything, and they can tell Lance doesn’t either. They’re both numb. So, so numb.  
Shiro’s funeral is short. They send his body out into space, labeled and marked and filled with parting words to him. Hunk writes a lot. Keith writes few. Allura doesn’t write at all, and instead places a trinket in his make-shift space casket. Coran doesn’t give anything. Lance just stares from afar, standing beside Pidge. They don’t talk, they just stand. Lance stiffens when Pidge puts a hand on his shoulder, which is a bit hard given their respective heights, but he looks at them gratefully. Pidge pulls away, and leaves before they can see Shiro’s body flung out into space, or Lance crumpling beneath the weight of the stress and crying into his hands. 

Life without Shiro moves on, but battles without Shiro halt. He’s not there to take the big hits, and he’s not there to be forgiving should someone ever mess up. Keith doesn’t take well to Shiro’s absence; the man was practically his idol. Pidge adds a stealth function to Keith’s lion, if only to make him stop being so reckless. Keith keeps throwing himself into harms way, he becomes experimental, and is starting to stop following Pidge’s orders. Pidge grows frustrated, but it’s not like they can do much about it, because Hunk follows after Keith’s lead, and from that Lance. Pidge gives up on being a leader.  
Subsequently, things begin to unravel.  
Keith gets separated, and he’s the next one to die. Galra forces surround him, and Pidge can still hear the ringing of his screams in their head. This is when Lance breaks, he fumbles, he screams, he goes on a rampage. Pidge keeps calm, but they’re shaken. Of course they’re shaken. It’s all their fault. They couldn’t get a hold of the situation, and now Keith’s dead too. Hunk blames Pidge, and Lance blames Pidge, and Allura blames Pidge, and Coran blames Pidge, and Pidge blames Pidge. But blame doesn’t matter, because Keith’s dead and there’s nothing anyone can do.  
Lance doesn’t take to Keith’s absence well. Pidge watches from afar as he falls apart. Lance throws himself into other things, he talks to Coran, he flirts with Allura, he stops eating so much and starts staring at his plate in silence. Pidge can’t get close to him, because there’s a lot of animosity being thrown at them lately. They take it, quietly, and assuredly. They know they deserve every ounce of hate they receive. They take the glares from Hunk, the quiet anger that resides in his brow when he frowns at them. They take the seething rage that flows from Lance’s mouth on the regular whenever on a mission, whenever doing anything. They take the way Allura avoids looking at them. They take the way Coran stops talking directly to them.  
A static is pulled over their senses. They can’t feel anything anymore. They stop eating, except when required to. They stop socializing, or, trying to socialize. They stop being themself. Black tries to coax them back into a wakeful mind, attempts to return them to their state from before. But no matter what progress is made, they’re always thrown further back.  
Pidge watches as Lance and Hunk grow close. They watch as Lance tries to forget about Keith’s death, but he can’t. They watch as Hunk is unable to handle Lance’s forever fluctuating emotions. Hunk separates himself from Lance, and Pidge tries again, tries to reconnect, and tries to get rid of the ceaseless static that pounds into their skull and makes their eyes burn.  
“Are you okay?”  
“No.”  
They sit beside him, and neither of them talk after the initial exchange. Pidge begins to see things in splinters. Lance would be happier with Blue. Keith would be alive with Red. Shiro would be unhappy, but breathing, with Black. Hunk would be their friend in Yellow. And in Green, they’d be Pidge again. They feel Lance, here, in Red, get frustrated. He sees it too.  
“Why do you think we’re being taunted like this? Why are we being shown what we could’ve been?” He asks, and he looks at Pidge pointedly, searching for answers in their face.  
“Maybe we’re just the unlucky ones caught up in the split.” Pidge says, and that’s all they can offer. They can’t give him any condolence, or console him in anyway. They stare back at him, and he cracks. He can’t stay mad at them, he can’t do it because he knows what’s coming next, and Pidge knows that too. 

Black has a lot of untapped potential. Black is the leader of the five lions for a good reason. That reason being, it’s the most powerful. It can turn anything it likes into a proxy weapon for itself. It holds the power to turn Pidge into the weapon that’s missing. It does. Pidge becomes even more violent, they lash out, they want the static to go away. They struggle and they clutch at their head and they pull hair out.  
They’re never violent towards others, they try to contain that vehement behavior. Despite it all they care, they care deeply. Lance is still avoiding them, and they take to talking to Black to keep themselves grounded. Human. They want to stay human. Black never speaks back, it stays silent, but sometimes it will soothe Pidge’s aches. Sometimes, it will try to mimic Green, who now lies dormant in the hangar. Pidge appreciates the gesture, but it doesn’t fill the hole in their chest.  
They liked Green.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Screams i shit this out in an hour im trY IN G 
> 
> again, tell me abt my mistakes cause i dont have a beta reader hahahhahah f U C K
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> Edit: hey wow theres a playlist to this now http://8tracks.com/apocolypsearisen/black-or-green


	3. Red

There’s issues, obviously, running deep throughout the team. Lance isolates himself now, and there’s no possible way for Pidge to really make up for the damage. Hunk is angry, and he has the right to be, but he’s taking it out in all the wrong ways. He’s constantly leaving to talk with Shay, abandoning the rest of them, even when there’s too much danger to handle. But somehow, they stay afloat. Pidge doesn’t understand it, how they’ve managed to survive for as long as they have. Their deaths are still imminent, but now it feels so distant. Perhaps their expiration date has come and gone? Perhaps they’re living on borrowed time?

Pidge doesn’t know what to make of it. They can’t grow attached to anyone anymore. Perhaps they really did become their lion, like Shiro did, separated and unable to connect. The black lion isn’t good at commitment, it wants to be an individual, and it wants to become itself. Pidge can’t help it, though they want to. Black communicates well, much better than the other lions, but what they say isn’t anything good. Black talks about how it remembers things like humans do, how they feel what it’s paladins feel. Black doesn’t necessarily talk, but it says so many things in the only way it can. It talks about how excess energy is transferred to the paladins, and whatever the lion chooses, to make for better combat skills.

It says that a side-effect is that the paladin’s moods and mannerisms are altered to fit what the lion wants and needs. It says that finding a like-mind is recommended, but not required. It says that the lions mourn as well, and that the ones without paladins can’t shift so easily into new management. It says they have conscience, it says they have feeling, it says so many things. It says it all at the wrong times. It says it in the heat of battle, it says it right after a nightmare that sends shockwaves down Pidge’s spine. Pidge won’t admit it, but they are grateful for the nightmares. They are grateful for the shockwaves of knowledge and of the harsh presence of their lion. It makes them feel.

They don’t know what it makes them feel per se, but they know they don’t feel empty and that’s what matters to them. There are always those little moments of panic after they wake up from the terrors that plague their sleeping form. They try to regain control of their body, but it’s hard. Every morning they wake up in a cold sweat and sprint towards the hangar, almost on autopilot, and they almost always hurt themselves trying to get out, to get to their family, to remember that they have a family. They have to learn how to stop themself from escaping, they have to learn how to put a timed lock on their door so they won’t go too far. They’re afraid of abandoning the people they’ve learned to depend on. They make the others a priority. The others, make Pidge an option to be considered only when all others have been exhausted. 

Pidge harbors no ill will for it, because the static that started a while ago has only increased tenfold. It grows stronger every day, and it beats up the inside of Pidge’s skull. There’s no silence with this static that controls their functions and thoughts. It rids Pidge of any last shreds of their former self. They’re not Katie, or Pidge, really, they’re just the Black Paladin. They still go by Pidge of course, as it’s the only thing they have left to their name, which is sustainably sad because it is their name. 

 

Things keep falling apart. Things just keep getting worse and worse and no one knows what to do. Hunk is barely ever at the castle of lions. Lance is tearing himself apart because he’s extroverted, he’s made for talking and socializing and being around people constantly, but Red is making him solitary, and that is not what he is by any shred of his being. Lance still craves attention, good or bad, and indulges himself by doing chores with Coran. It’s funny, really, how they all start to pair off and drift apart like continents.

Allura forgives Pidge. She forgives them, but she doesn’t forget. She makes sure Pidge realizes that mistakes were made, and enforces the idea that Pidge could do better. Pidge acknowledges this, and tries to follow Allura’s instruction. Allura in turn, stops ignoring Pidge, Allura talks to Pidge, and they talk endlessly together. Neither know why they talk so much, because there isn’t much to say out in the vacuum of space. There’s not much to say about anything, because there’s no telling what will bring back memories for Allura, what will cause her to cry into her hands. Allura is different from Lance, she doesn’t want people around her when she’s upset. She wants to be alone, she wants to recuperate and reconsider her actions before performing them. Lance can’t do that on his own, on his own he’ll let it fester and infect him, he’ll hold a grudge, and he won’t let things go. Lance needs help, but Red has changed him so much that he can’t reach out without feeling the need to pull away. 

Pidge doesn’t know if Lance is getting the help he needs. Lance is tense during meals, and any conversation that Pidge or Allura try to hold with him is met with firm resistance. It’s disheartening. It’s concerning. Pidge thinks Lance is starting to look up to Coran, but in the way a child would look up to their wacky uncle, not in the parental way Shiro goaded the team into following Pidge’s instruction. Lance went to Shiro for guidance, just like the rest of them did, and Lance went to Keith and Hunk for companionship. And, in Keith’s case, or at least Pidge assumes, for a relationship. 

Shiro’s dead, Keith too, and Hunk has made it explicit that he’s not coming back to Voltron. Lance won’t connect to Allura and Pidge, no matter what they both attempt to do. Eventually, Allura gives up on getting to him. Pidge keeps trying, keeps being present in Lance’s space for as long as they can. They follow the same routine, and don’t talk unless Lance wants to. He never does. They’re all trying to recover. They’re doing their best. 

And then Coran dies. 

He doesn’t even die in battle. He was doing a simple maintenance check, working in seemingly regular area. And then, Lance says he heard a click, and Coran saying something in frustration, before the explosion took place. Pidge wants to investigate, but they have to take care of Lance. He keeps refusing to go into the healing pod, and Pidge can’t keep themself from getting frustrated. They can’t get Lance in the healing pod and he’s got burn marks all over him and he can’t die too. Pidge can’t let that happen. They don’t know what to do.

They scream. 

They scream and cry and hold their head in their hands. They pull their hair out of their head and it’s so easy now because everything is so stressful and everything felt so far away and it felt like none of it touched Pidge ever. They felt so devoid of feeling and robbed of every emotion they had and why is it all just coming back now? It’s so sudden and uncalled for, they should be worrying about Lance, but now they’re just sobbing uncontrollably, and there’s a lump in their throat, and they can’t speak, and the room is spinning why is everything spinning? Things shouldn’t be spinning that’s not how things work and-

The static stopped. 

The static that ruled their life is gone and everything is too much. The lights are too bright. The metal under Pidge’s bare feet feels too cold. The strain of losing everyone they care about is still fresh in their mind, it’s there and it hurts so badly. Allura’s muffled screams of anger, of anguish, of horror at losing the last of her culture suddenly pop into Pidge’s ears. Things come back in awful clarity. It’s too real, it’s too close. Their vision is no longer shattered and splintered and filled with other things than it should. Pidge isn’t dead anymore. 

Lance looks scared. 

Pidge thinks he looked better when he was with Keith. What was Keith? Yes, green. Green paladin.

They both liked green.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fffffffffffffffffffffucking end me
> 
> again: tell me abt any mistakes cause this is v obviously NO T B ET A RE AD

**Author's Note:**

> You wanna know what I am?
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> :)))))
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> The worst :)))))))))
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> Also: tell me abt any mistakes i made cause i wrote this at 4:30 in the morning while screaming at my cat about how much i love pidge while she began to vomit up a hairball the size of montgomery


End file.
